The $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2013 that President Barack Obama rolled out on Monday is going nowhere, at least not as a short-term blueprint for spending and taxing. That has little to do with what's contained in the vast document, and almost everything to do with political reality: Neither house of Congress plans to pay it much mind.

In today's highly partisan Washington, it's no surprise that the GOP-run House will give Obama's ideas short shrift. House Republicans will again pass their own fiscal plan, which will die in the Senate, where Democrats rule. But the president's plan won't fare any better there. Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said that the Senate won't be passing a budget of any kind this year.

Reid's public reasoning is that last year's deal to raise the debt ceiling already spells out how the federal government will operate through next fall's election, so there's really no need for another budget. But congressional Democrats haven't passed a budget since 2009, in large part because they don't want their names attached to any proposal that projects enormous deficits well into the future.

And that's what lies ahead for a country that was already running large deficits -- because it cut taxes, then fought two major wars on credit -- before the Great Recession slashed revenues and ballooned safety-net spending.

What Americans need from their leaders is what Reid won't even attempt: a plausible strategy to get out of this hole once the recovery takes bloom and before baby boomers overwhelm Medicare and Social Security.

The president and Speaker John Boehner seemed to grasp this last summer when they tried to cut a deal that would both have raised more money and reined in entitlement spending. Unfortunately, neither party wants to swallow both those pills.

Until they do, budgets will be mere political documents, and America will continue its drift toward a fiscal iceberg. Word that Moody's has downgraded its outlook for Great Britain is just the latest reminder of what happens to countries that fail to get their houses in order.

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